This lack of rainfall, coupled with an early Spring, perhaps explains why a stressed Father Birch is turning and dropping yellow leaves already. I looked back at last year, which I had documented in a post and found that he had not started until mid-October!
This shift may also explain the disappearance of MamaChuck. My research revealed that in this part of MI, chucks can go into hibernation beginning in late September through October. Meanwhile, Duffy the skunk, is enjoying his new digs and easy access to the Diner as are the Turkey posse who are out and about nearly on a daily basis.
9/25-warm in the 70's with beautiful, puffy clouds.
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Library memes and critter fun:
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| Oh geez, where's the whiteout? |
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-Groucho Marx
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| Daddy, I'm hungry and I want belly rubs! |
Beware of dog floor mosaic-Pompeii, First Century AD. Cave Canem!
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| Sailko |
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American Gothic by Grant Wood-1930
The House-Dibble House, Eldon, Iowa
The subjects: Nan Wood Graham (the artist's sister) and Dr. Byron McKeeby (the Woods' family dentist).
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The Apennine Colossus, Tuscany, Italy
From Wiki: Flemish sculptor Jean de Boulogne aka Giambologna, created the colossal figure, a personification of the Apennine mountains, in the late 1580s. It is 36 feet high.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apennine_Colossus
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Fun fact: James Doohan, who starred as Scotty on Star Trek, was in the Royal Canadian Army 1938-1945 and fought on Juno beach during D-Day.
Fun Michigan fact: There were numerous German POW camps in Michigan, one was outside of Owosso!
https://michiganology.org/stories/german-pow-camps-in-michigan/
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Fabulous satire: Politicians Discussing Global Warming
A puddle sculpture by Spanish artist Issac Cordal entitled Follow The Leader Berlin, 2011.
WTF department: Sonic Burgers new tagline:
The official bullshit:
“From our unique drive-in format to our thousands of customizable flavor combinations – and particularly our beloved drinks – SONIC has always stood out from the everyday fast-food experience,” said Ryan Dickerson, Chief Marketing Officer of SONIC. “Burger menus and flavors have become so similar across brands, and we want to give everyone a break from boring. Food should be fun, and that’s exactly what guests get when they come to SONIC – whether it’s a classic chili cheese coney paired with tots or a beverage you’ve customized yourself like the viral Dr Pepper® with pickle slices. When you choose SONIC, you’re choosing to escape mundanity – and choosing to LIVE FREE and EAT SONIC.”
A masterwork of cynical marketing, trying to surf the "Freedom" trend and sell more fucking burgers.
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Sci-Fi shorts
Chris Lee: Robot Journey parts 1-5.
Story background: The lonely robot started the search for a new livable planet for mankind. After traveling for decades, it discovered a planet that was highly similar to the Earth. It visited this planet, but it found that there were still other things on this planet. If there are other things, what dangers will it encounter?
Striking and often creepy visuals!
Phil Langer: Hybrids
I was gobsmacked by the beauty and detail in these AI generated/CGI animated/tweaked with photoshop imagery.
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Danger Man (Secret Agent in the US).
A British made-for-TV program that initially had Ian Fleming working on development. Like James Bond, our hero John Drake goes on missions all over the globe. Patrick McGoohan was cast and leveraged some of his own family-friendly ideas: rare use of guns and no outright seductions of women (although some low key, brief interactions did occur). As in the Bond series, there are gadgets galore but by today's standards, they are laughable and cumbersome in those pre-computer, pre-chip days.
The show ran 1960-62 when it was cancelled. But, after the overwhelming success of the Bond movies and The Avengers, the show was revived 1964-1968. The American version, Secret Agent, had a new theme song Secret Agent Man, sung by Johnny Rivers.
I must admit the early shows were a bit tedious but I enjoyed McGoohan who survived on his wits and charm. They seemed more realistic and gritty than the spiffed up and polished Bond films. I liked the revival version and my fav was Not So Jolly Roger from 1966. Drake is sent to investigate nefarious goings on at a pirate radio station located in one of Britain's WW2 defense Maunsell Forts which were located along the coasts and river mouths.
Well, these otherworldly sea platforms caught my imagination-as well as pirate radio and rock 'n roll (albeit pretty cheesy examples)-cool stuff. These forts later reminded me of the alien machines in The War of the Worlds.
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| 2019 British version of War of the Worlds |
McGoohan left the series in 1968 to make The Prisoner which featured a number of writers and staff from Danger Man.
A word I had not come across before which turned up in Danger Man: contumacious-stubborn or willful disobedience to authority.
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From 1965, The Kinks Till the End of the Day
Fun vid featuring the hair and fashions of the British swinging '60's, Twiggy, b/w snips from the 1960 film Beat Girl and a cross of Go Go girls dressed in gold lamé pants and early exercise vid (cuing up Physical by Olivia Newton-John!). While not one of the most memorable Kinks tunes, they are in their garage band/power chords mode with the exuberant, youthful expression of freedom and rebellion:
You and me we're freeWe do as we please, yeahFrom morning, till the end of the day
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Breaking news: The Altar Stone at Stonehenge: From Scotland!
From the Stonehenge Stone Circle News and Information:
The Altar Stone at Stonehenge is one of the most mysterious of the 900 tons of rock that has been deliberately brought to the site by humans over the last 5000 years.
It sits inside the stone circle in a very special position – lying prone, mostly buried in the turf, directly in front of what was once the tallest trilithon on the site of which only a single stone still stands, the slim and elegant Stone 56.
It’s tricky to see as it’s mostly obscured by the collapsed upright and lintel of that tallest trilithon, but this image shows the eastern half of it highlighted in red – the dotted lines indicate that it continues off-picture to the right.
It has always been recognised that the Altar Stone is a “foreign” stone, that it is not a locally-sourced sarsen.
For over a century it had been grouped with the bluestones that originate in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire in south west Wales but – being a sandstone rather than a dolerite or rhyolite – its likely source was thought to be the Cosheston Beds of Old Red Sandstone near Milford Haven.
The suggestion was that it had been collected along the supposed coastal route that the bluestones were assumed to have taken.
The story didn’t stop there. Further analysis revealed another wrinkle – the Altar Stone has a very high level of barium, much higher than the samples extracted from the Anglo-Welsh basin for comparison. The historical linking of the Altar Stone and bluestones as “foreign” stones had biased researchers towards looking for a South Wales source for it, and the evidence was now pointing a different way.
In 2023, via a paper entitled “The Stonehenge Altar Stone was probably not sourced from the Old Red Sandstone of the Anglo-Welsh Basin: Time to broaden our geographic and stratigraphic horizons?” Ixer, Pearce, Bevins et al dropped a bombshell.
Looking at the geological map of Britain, there are only a few possible sources of an Old Red Sandstone with such high levels of baryte cement – the West Midlands, the north of England and… Orkney.
From CNN:
A mineral analysis found that the stone likely originated from 435 miles (700 kilometers) away in current-day northeast Scotland, rather than Wales, overturning a century-old theory.
“This is the longest recorded journey for any stone used in a monument at that period,” said Nick Pearce, a professor of geography and Earth sciences at Aberystwyth University in Wales.
Researchers believe the stone may have been transported over open water, which suggests that ancient Britain and its citizens were much more advanced 5,000 years ago than previously believed.
Which brought to mind-St. Brendan the Navigator
The Irish Kon Tiki by Tim Severin (1976–1977)
From Wiki: It is theorized by some scholars that the Latin texts of Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage o fSt. Brendan the Abbot) dating back to at least 800 AD tell the story of Brendan's (c. 489–583) seven-year voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to a new land and his return. Convinced that the legend was based on historical truth, in 1976 Severin built a replica of Brendan's currach . Handcrafted using traditional tools, the 36-foot (11 m), two-masted boat was built of Irish ash and oak , hand-lashed together with nearly two miles (3 km) of leather thong, wrapped with 49 traditionally tanned ox hides, and sealed with wool grease.
On May 17, 1976, Severin and his crew (George Maloney, Arthur Magan, Tróndur Patursson) sailed from Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry on the Brendan, and, over more than 13 months, travelled 4,500 miles (7,200 km), arriving at Canada on June 26, 1977, landing on Peckford Island, Newfoundland, before being towed to Musgrave Harbour by the Canadian Coast Guard. Severin told reporters, "We've proved that a leather boat can cross the North Atlantic by a route that few modern yachtsmen would attempt.". Along the way, they had stopped at the Hebrides, the Faroe Islands and Iceland (where they spent the winter until departing again on May 11) en route. He considered that his recreation of the voyage helped to identify the basis for many of the legendary elements of the story: the "Island of Sheep", the "Paradise of Birds", "Crystal Towers", "mountains that hurled rocks at voyagers", and the "Promised Land". Severin's account of the expedition, The Brendan Voyage, became an international best-seller, translated into 16 languages.
A vid depicting that voyage:
Man, that looks rough! True, this depiction recreates a voyage thousands of years after one that may have brought the Altar Stone from Scotland but it gives one a sense of what those early sailors experienced.
